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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Gloria Allred’s Surprise For Mitt Romney Revealed!
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/mitt-romney-october-surprise-revealed-gloria-allred
_____________________
***hollaring***
Somebody call 9-1-1, I’m choking from laughing.
http://youtu.be/7AW5A8FTGjU
Dan Poignon@dpoignon
Clear Channel gave option to anon family buying billboards to disclose ID & they refused. #Edshow / Boycott ClearChannel ’til we get source!
http://twitter.com/jennysgay/status/260550772402552832/photo/1
Tue Oct 23, 2012 at 12:44 PM PDT.
What’s not being reported: This is becoming a disaster for the GOP on multiple levels
Last night every GOP fear about a Mitt Romney presidential candidacy came true. He couldn’t stand up to Obama at all. There’s only two weeks left to go. If this race is as close as the media keeps telling us than last night was a tremendous disaster for Republicans. Since the first debate Romney has failed to make the case for Conservativism. Instead Romney has adopted the debate strategy of being a moderate democrat who appears on Fox News, and that strategy didn’t work.
Proof, from last night.
calamity broke out. Did they address Romney’s failures? No. They called Obama a retard instead. This is why Republicans are going to lose. Last night proved that if Obama is paying attention to the debates instead of his day job he can easily mop the floor with Romney, the best guy the GOP had in a very weak field of candidates. What Republicans must be doing is looking at the utter shitstorm coming down on the them if things don’t go their way, and it can’t look pretty.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/23/1148824/-What-s-not-being-reported-This-is-becoming-a-disaster-for-the-GOP-on-multiple-levels
Congressmen Want Justice Department To Probe GOP Voter Drives In Florida, Virginia
Source: TPM
Three House Democrats asked Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday to order a Justice Department investigation into a voter registration drive paid for by the Republican National Committee that has been connected to alleged tampering in at least two states.
Reps. Jim Moran, Bobby Scott and Gerry Connolly, all of Virginia, asked investigators to look into political consultant Nathan Sproul and two companies, Strategic Allied Consulting and Pinpoint, that were all involved in the drive. The effort ran into trouble in Florida and Virginia in recent weeks with accusations of fraud and destruction of voter registration forms.
A Justice Department spokesman said the agency received the letter and was reviewing it but had no further comment.
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/house-dems-want-doj-probe-of-rnc-voter
Harris County sets new record for early voting
http://www.khou.com/news/local/Harris-County-sets-new-record-in-Early-Voting-175424401.html
HOUSTON — Harris County set a new record Monday for voting during the first day of Early Voting in person. The Chief Election Officer of the County, Stan Stanart, said 47,093 people voted, shattering the November 2008 first day total of 39,201.
“We had a record breaking first day of Early Voting,” said County Clerk Stanart. “It is obvious that our message encouraging voters to vote early and avoid the issues of determining their Election Day voting location has been heard.”
Go, Harris County!
Way to go, Harris County!
CAP Action: Congress@CAPcongress
WELL WISHES: Sen. McCaskill (D-#MO) cancels campaign events to be w/ her ill mom. http://cap.af/WH8GLt
____________
Prayers to Sen McCaskill’s mother!
Rikyrah, check your e-mail please. Your video clip link awaits you. I’ve done a thread on it too.
Framing THIS pic….
The baby is adorable.
In Final Debate, Romney Hides Position On The Auto Bailout
Sahil Kapur October 23, 2012, 10:00 AM
t the final presidential debate Monday night, Mitt Romney obscured his early opposition to providing taxpayer funds to rescue the auto industry before it went through a private bankruptcy process.
“I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry. My plan to get the industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks,” he said. “I said they need — these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees, but they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of excess cost and the debt burden that they’d built up. … I said that we would provide guarantees and that was what was able to allow these companies to go through bankruptcy, to come out of bankruptcy.”
“The idea that has been suggested that I would liquidate the industry — of course not,” the GOP candidate said. “That’s the height of silliness.”
In fact, Romney had advocated against using the government to bail out Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, instead pushing for the auto companies to first undergo a managed bankruptcy, restructure their operations, and revive themselves with funds from the private sector. On Nov. 18, 2008, he wrote a op-ed in the New York Times famously titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” arguing that government assistance should only come after the auto makers go through bankruptcy on their own.
“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” Romney wrote. “It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”
At the time, the financial markets were in free-fall and credit was frozen. It was all but inconceivable that the critically wounded industry could have procured the funds to avoid liquidation if the government had not stepped in. As a result, President Bush issued a short-term rescue plan late in 2008 and President Obama extended it in the spring of 2009, extracting concessions from auto makers and shareholders to keep the companies afloat.
Late in 2011, while fighting for the Republican nomination, Romney stuck to his guns that the auto bailout as structured was the wrong way to go.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/debate-mitt-romney-auto-bailout.php?ref=fpb
Romney Wussed Out
by BooMan
Tue Oct 23rd, 2012 at 09:40:35 AM EST
I think it’s funny that Mitt Romney’s cynicism bit him in the ass last night. For the first time, I watched a debate on CNN so I could watch the moment-to-moment reaction of their survey group. Every time that Romney said something bellicose the audience reacted negatively, which seemed to vindicate his overall strategy of backtracking on all his tough talk on foreign policy. But that was an effort to win a bunch of small skirmishes that caused him to lose the war.
The segment of the population who actually knows what Romney has been saying about Iran and Pakistan and Israel and Iraq and Egypt and Libya noticed that Romney was flip-flopping and changing his positions. Those who didn’t know his record noticed that he was basically endorsing and approving of Obama’s policies.
I’ve seen analysis that Romney was debating like he had a lead. It may have seemed that way, but he doesn’t have a lead and he never has had a lead. And that’s not what he was thinking. He was thinking that the foreign policies he has been espousing poll very badly and that Joe Biden exposed that in his debate with Paul Ryan. It’s not that Romney thought he could coast to victory. It’s that he had nothing to say that could possibly help his cause.
But, here’s the thing. Romney would have been better off espousing unpopular opinions in a confident manner than he was in jettisoning his whole foreign policy critique and looking weak as a result. He should have learned that from his success in the first debate in which he lost on substance but won by being the more dominant personality.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/10/23/94035/459
Religion, Race And Double Standards
Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had never attended Jeremiah Wright’s church in Chicago and had decided to attend services, and proselytize for, a black separatist, nationalist church that refused to allow whites to participate in crucial religious services because white people had been condemned by God for their iniquity in the ancient past and had been for ever marked white so black Americans would know instantly to keep their distance. In fact, the definition of white in this black supremacist church was just one drop of white blood in a black person. It was Nazi-like in its racist precision and exclusion. Whites were denied the rites that made a person a full member of the church. Even blacks with a tiny strain of white DNA were kept from full participation.
Imagine further that backing this racist church was not a youthful folly on Obama’s part, but a profound commitment – that he went on a mission abroad to convert Christians to a new religion based on black racial supremacy, and has often said that the most important thing in his entire life to this day is a church whose sacred scripture declares white people to be cursed by God for their past sins – and the sign of this curse is their white skin.
A simple question: Do you think this issue would not come up in a general election or a primary? If Obama was subjected to news cycle after news cycle of clips of Obama’s actual former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, can you imagine the outrage if Obama had actually been a part of a black supremacist church – that denied whites equal access to the sacraments – for over a decade in his adult life?
I raise this because it is a fact that Mitt Romney belonged to a white supremacist church for 31 years of his life, went on a mission to convert Christians and Jews and others to this church, which retained white supremacy as a doctrine until 1978 – decades after Brown vs Board of Education, and a decade after the end of the anti-miscegenation laws.
Once upon a time, when journalists were actually asking politicians tough questions, rather than begging for a get for ratings, this question was actually asked of Mitt Romney by Tim Russert. It’s a fascinating exchange for many reasons:
http://youtu.be/Pcw0woPX5VY
…………………………………..
Notice also the lack of any apparent remorse, or criticism of the church’s previous position. This is a church that can take a position rooted in its own Scripture and just one day say it’s over and let’s move on. Even white supremacism! And people still don’t see how Mormonism – its utilitarian use of truth, its studied mainstream all-American appeal, its refusal to be completely transparent to outsiders, and its insistence on never having to account for itself – isn’t integral to Mitt Romney’s personality and beliefs. Romney will no more let outsiders look at his finances than the LDS church will allow non-Mormons inside their Temples after they have been consecrated.
Look: every religion has these stains in its past. My own church committed the Inquisition and, in my view, began the demonization of the Jewish people that killed and terrified and marginalized so many for centuries, leading to the Holocaust. Its continued systematic discrimination against women is a scandal. Its criminal rape of children makes it the most flawed current Christian institution on earth. And if you asked a Catholic candidate whether it was wrong for the Church to have treated Jews as cursed and sub-human for so long, I cannot imagine any Catholic politician not saying yes. Unequivocally. Is there a mite of evidence that Mitt Romney ever challenged the white supremacism in his religion and its active racism while it was in existence and he was still a missionary and member for 31 years of his life?
Listen again to the last question and answer in the Russert interview:
Russert: But it was wrong for your faith to exclude [African-Americans] for as long as it did?
Romney: I’ve told you exactly where I stand. My view is that there is no discrimination in the eyes of God and I could not have been more pleased when the decision occurred.
Why could he not just have said “yes”?
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/religion-race-and-double-standards.html
October 23, 2012 12:28 PM
Pricing Moderate Mitt’s Medicaid Block Grant
By Ed Kilgore
I found it very odd in the debate last night that in talking about how he’d pay for a defense spending increase (along with his tax cut) Mitt Romney singled out his Medicaid block grant proposal, almost certainly the most shameful part of his domestic agenda, but one that not a lot of people understand. For a moment I hoped Obama would go into Medicaid in detail, but instead he chose to make another important point, the vast size of our current defense budget as compared to that of every other country on the face of the earth.
But today comes a report from WaPo’s Sarah Kliff on a new Kaiser Family Foundation study of the impact of a Medicaid block grant structured much as Romney (and House Republicans) have talked about.
The Kaiser report notes that the destruction of ObamaCare that Romney’s is proposing as the first act of his presidency would itself cut Medicaid enrollment by 17 million people. Add in the effects of the block grant, even if you accept Romney’s assumptions on the ability of states to reduce costs, and another 14 million are likely dropped from the Medicaid rolls (if costs stay roughly as they are now, it’s more like 20 million). And that’s in order to provide a small offset against spending increases beyond current Pentagon requests, and a tax cut for the wealthy that the wealthy don’t need (on top of continuing the Bush Era cuts forever).
Eliminating health insurance for somewhere between 31 and 37 million of the neediest Americans (totally aside from the other insurance-destroying features of Mitt’s fine health care thinking such as interstate sales and elimination of subsidies for employer coverage) isn’t “moderate.” Nor are the huge non-defense discretionary spending cuts (affecting education, transportation, environmental protection, and a vast array of other government functions) that Romney and Ryan both propose (though in a broad categorical, not an itemized, manner, so that supporters of any one type of spending can imagine it would be spared), which would also be made to help offset unasked-for defense spending and unnecessary tax cuts. The Moderate Mitt of the debate season has suggested he won’t let education cuts affect the number of teachers our schools employ, and he’s hinted the tax cuts might not be as large as he promised conservatives. But if you look at Medicaid, or at the many, many other programs—especially helping the poorest Americans—that are bound to be ground up in the bottom-to-top redistributionist scheme of the Romney and Ryan budgets, there’s no moderation there at all.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_10/pricing_moderate_mitts_medicai040682.php
It’s Time to Question the GOP’s Patriotism
Monday, October 22, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 4:17 PM
I have had it up to here with the Republican intransigence against the United States of America. I have had it with the GOP not just hurting our country economically for political gain, but politicizing every war-and-peace topic. At some point, when a political party seems incapable of coming together at an hour of crisis, of putting America before their political futures; at some point when a political party is hell bent on launching political attacks on American civil servants in harm’s way, and on document dumping for political gain – at that point you have to stop and say: this is not patriotic. This is not patriotism. This is unpatriotic behavior.
When this president set a clear path forward to exit Iraq, Republicans cried with no clear alternatives. When this president took out bin Laden, the Republican media machine went on overdrive to try to deny him credit. When this president ended the national security nightmare of throwing out qualified, brave soldiers out of the military because of their sexual orientation, Republicans warned of a coming apocalypse.
From the beginning of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Mitt Romney started running his mouth. Before the facts were known, he couldn’t help himself from running to the microphone to attack the people in the Embassy who were trying to protect their own lives. Mitt Romney has been so brazen, he even forgot to pay attention to the President’s words, when he spoke in the Rose Garden the day after the attacks. Last week, Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, dumped 166 pages of sensitive State Department documents revealing and endangering the lives of many who are cooperating with the United States within Libya.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/its-time-to-question-gops-patriotism.html
Ryan doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand
By Steve Benen – Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:36 PM EDT.
I didn’t intend to return to the “horses and bayonets” story, but Paul Ryan’s bizarre confusion is worth considering.
To briefly recap, Mitt Romney said “our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917.” President Obama explained that the comparison doesn’t make sense, since our military and strategic needs have changed dramatically over the last 95 years. Congressman Ryan, meanwhile, is simply lost.
http://youtu.be/RK-kyN4LeXU
CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell asked the far-right Wisconsin lawmaker about the exchange, and here’s how he responded:
“To compare modern American battleships and Navy with bayonets, I just don’t understand that comparison. Look, we have to have a strong Navy to keep peace and prosperity and sea lanes open…. If all these defense cuts go through, our Navy will be small than it was before World War I. That’s not acceptable. And, yes, the ocean hasn’t shrunk.”
Oh, for goodness sakes. I don’t know if Ryan is being deliberately obtuse or if the guy just doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but Obama isn’t comparing battleships with bayonets. If Ryan expects to hold national office in three months, he’ll need to be much smarter than this.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/23/14646904-ryan-doesnt-understand-what-he-doesnt-understand?lite
SMGDH LOL, LMBAO, BWA HA HA HA
I believe the Spanish Armada had 5000 ships. Didn’t work out too well for them either. :)
Debate Spin Room: John Kerry & Romney, Now & Then
By Charles P. Pierce
at 12:36PM
What a strange time it must be to be John Kerry. Absent a few thousand votes, and not a little chicanery, in the state of Ohio, he might be wrapping up his second term as president right now. He would have won election in the first place partly by virtue of having won all three of his debates against the incumbent, George W. Bush. That turned out not to matter at all. Instead, he is playing the challenger, Willard Romney, in debate practice on behalf of the incumbent, Barack Obama, who clearly won two of the three debates, and that is turning out not to matter very much at all in an election that may come down essentially to… Ohio. Late Monday night in the spin room here, after Romney’s preposterous performance in a debate that was ostensibly about foreign policy, Kerry’s persona seemed locked halfway between sheer incredulity and utter gobsmackery.
“What you saw tonight was the difference between a commander-in-chief and a campaigner in confusion,” Kerry told a group of us. “Mitt Romney was able to recite Wikipedia facts about a country, but he had no policies. He agreed with the president and agreed with the president — totally different from what he’s been saying for the last seven years. He shows up here tonight, agrees with the president on this and that. You know, the game Battleship came up in there. I think tonight the president sank his battleship.
“On every occasion, Romney would say something and the president would indicate we’re already doing that, and more. Honestly, I was surprised. I was amazed at the degree to which Mitt Romney was the Etch-A-Sketch foreign-policy candidate tonight, who came in here, just changing — shake it up, agree with the president, and hope to get out of there quickly.”
Kerry, of course, is said to be in line to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in the eventuality of a second Obama term, so a lot of what he was saying was pure good-sailorism on behalf of the ticket and (to be completely honest) in advancement of his own career. But as a serious man who’s taken on serious issues in his time — Google “Kerry + BCCI” some time — his astonishment at Romney’s apparently bottomless well of cynical opportunism seemed utterly genuine.
“He shakes it up and he comes back and he has a new policy,” Kerry said. “That’s not how you should be a commander-in-chief. This was a confused candidate tonight. This was a man who does not have a clear sense of the world. Never have we had a ticket with so little experience, and in both debates, it has shown up. Let me give you an example.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/john-kerry-debate-2012-14022079#ixzz2A9HYtmBU
Posted at 12:32 PM ET, 10/23/2012
The Obama camp’s view of the race’s final stretch
By Greg Sargent
The Romney campaign has been admirably proactive in spinning the media to cover the race on its terms, whether it comes to the supposed “surge” he continues to enjoy (the race has stabilized) or the Obama camp’s supposed pulling out of North Carolina (which Obama aides flatly deny). The Obama camp has been comparatively quiet when it comes to pushing its own version of the race.
That changed this morning during an Obama campaign conference call with reporters. Obama advisers made key points: Obama aides insist they are either tied or winning in all the battlegrounds — and that Romney has succeeded in locking up nothing. And they say the early vote continues to bode well for an Obama victory.
“Anybody who thinks those states are in the bag is half in the bag themselves,” top Obama adviser David Axelrod said of North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. “We have added millions to TV spending in each of these states. We are doubling down. We are not pulling back at all. We believe that Florida is an incredibly competitive state. North Carolina is a competitive state. Virginia is a competitive state. These are states Republicans were expecting to have wrapped up and they’re battling to hold on to them.”
The polls suggest Romney is significantly ahead in North Carolina and is winning by a smaller edge in Florida. But the averages also suggest the race may still be a dead heat in Virginia — something that’s gotten lost in coverage of the race. That matters, since Romney may have to win Ohio and Virginia to win, and he’s leading in neither
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Nothing Is Foreign to the Liar Willard Romney Anymore: A Report from the Flippy-Floppy Final Debate of 2012
By Charles P. Pierce
at 1:11AM
It was early in the proceedings here on Monday night when I was struck with a horrible vision. It may have been right about that moment in the final presidential debate when Willard Romney — who, for most of the past two years, has been the most bellicose Mormon since they disbanded the Nauvoo Legion — looked deeply into the camera’s eye and, inches from actual sincerity, said, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.” Or, perhaps, it was when, in a discussion of his newfound dedication to comprehensive solutions to complex problems, he announced his devotion to “a peaceful planet,” or when he cited a group of Arab scholars in support of loosening the grip of theocratic tyranny in the Middle East.
It was the horrible vision of John Bolton in four-point restraints.
You have to give Romney and his campaign credit. They said they were going to do it. They telegraphed the punch five months ago. They told the entire nation that there would come a day in which everything Willard Romney had said about anything in his entire seven-year quest to be president would be rendered, in the memorable word of Nixon White House flack Ron Ziegler, “inoperative.” They told us quite honestly that their entire campaign was going to be based on an ongoing argument between the Willard Romney who ran for the Republican nomination and the Willard Romney who thereupon would run for president. They told us he would renege on his previous positions, and he has. They told us he would reverse his field over and over again, and he has. They told us that the only real principle to which the man will ever hold firm is that he will be utterly unprincipled.
They told us that, sooner or later, everybody who supported him through the primaries because he was the only Republican candidate who didn’t sound like he belonged in a padded chapel would find themselves under the bus. And nowhere in his campaign was Romney firmer in his resolve than he was to a modernized version of the neoconservative agenda that so thrilled the world under the leadership of C-Plus Augustus. A full 17 of his 25 primary foreign-policy advisers had been deckhands on that particular plague ship, Sailing Master Bolton chief among them. And, at the end of the day, they all just turned out to be the last people to go sliding under the wheels. For the full 90 minutes of the foreign-policy debate at Lynn University here on Monday night, whether it was the president speaking or Romney, neoconservatism’s breath barely clouded the mirror.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-foreign-policy-debate-14005209#ixzz2A9GucfUh
hilarious
http://instagram.com/p/RIgL-UQqmT/
Ohio county sends wrong voting location and date to 3200 people http://thkpr.gs/S0VvT5
Tim Hall
Someone wrote “You should not be allowed to vote if you collect food stamps.” Great with no red states voting President would win big.
Setting the record straight on the auto rescue
By Steve Benen – Tue Oct 23, 2012 10:25 AM EDT
A key part of Mitt Romney’s strategy in last night’s debate was to shift the focus away from foreign policy — even in the debate devoted to foreign policy — and onto the economy. There was, however, one problem with the tactic: Romney is wrong about domestic issues, too.
By some measures, one of the most contentious exchanges of the night was over President Obama’s successful rescue of the American auto industry.
The dispute was pretty straightforward: Obama said to Romney, “You were very clear that you would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies even if they went through bankruptcy. You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn’t true.”
Romney said in response, “You’re wrong,” three times. The Republican concluded, “People can look it up.”
What a good idea.
In a debate in which many of the disputes are subjective, it’s nice to have an argument in which there’s an objective truth. Romney told viewers last night that his position was that American auto makers “can get government help and government guarantees” as part of the bankruptcy process.
Depending on how generous one is inclined to be, this is either a lie or a stunning case of “Romnesia.”
——————————————————————————–
Jonathan Cohn, who’s done some great reporting on the auto rescue in recent years, noted Romney’s condemnation during the Republican primaries of using public funds for the industry. Here’s what Romney said during a debate in late 2011:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/23/14643534-setting-the-record-straight-on-the-auto-rescue?lite#__utma=238145375.1863422262.1350062695.1350062695.1351010176.2&__utmb=238145375.1.10.1351010176&__utmc=238145375&__utmx=-&__utmz=238145375.1351010176.2.2.utmcsr=jackandjillpolitics.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/2012/10/tuesday-open-thread-222/&__utmv=238145375.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7Cmsnbc%20tv%7Crachel%20maddow%20show%7Crachel%20maddow%20show=1^12=Landing%20Content=Original=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Earned%20to%20Original=1&__utmk=68914898
11,000 at President Obama’s Delray Beach rally
POTUS stops to visit with local kids he saw as he was driving into morning event
http://tiny.cc/7c6mmw
Washington, DC – The latest online rumor citing Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign for calling U.S. voters from Filipino call centers has been denied by the Romney campaign. However, as the Communications Workers of America (CWA) notes today, we know that two other revelations this year about Romney and Republicans’ off-shoring call center work overseas are true and disturbing.
As McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed writes of the new rumor, “The Romney campaign flatly rejected a widely-spread online rumor Sunday night that it had outsourced some of its call centers. The rumor, which has been percolating on Twitter in recent days, appears to be fueled by anecdotal accounts from people who say they’ve received cold calls from Romney campaign canvassers located in the Philippines.”
However, two earlier revelations involving both Romney and the RNC and off-shoring call centers are true and undisputed. First, in May, to conduct a media conference call dedicated to attacking President Obama’s economic record, the Republican National Committee (RNC) used a call center based in the Philippines, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Second and even more damaging, an investigative report in the Washington Post from June highlighted the fact that Romney helped to usher in the detrimental practice of shipping call center jobs overseas. At a time when the U.S. call center industry is shedding jobs and American consumers face heightened risks of fraud emanating from overseas call centers, the revelations are troubling.
BREAKING: Federal Appeals Court blocks Indiana from defunding Planned Parenthood http://thkpr.gs/S0KnWk
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/23/1148793/-Romney-campaign-pause-to-laugh-say-Mitt-won-the-debate
Unfreakingbelievable! Mitt Romney and his team are arrogant mofos.
Posted at 09:09 AM ET, 10/23/2012
TheWashingtonPost
Dueling post-debate ads: Obama goes positive; Romney hits ‘apology tour’
By Greg Sargent
The Obama and Romney campaigns both released ads this morning, and the contrast between them says a lot about how each campaign viewed last night’s debate.
In the Obama camp’s new, minute-long direct-to-camera ad, the President mounts a very aggressive defense of his economic record, arguing that the economy is, in fact, recovering — something I and others have been hoping to see. He then lays out some specifics of his second term agenda, i.e. more public investment manufacturing and clean energy, and reducing the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and with savings from winding down the wars. The ad is entirely positive.
By contrast, Romney’s new ad features footage of him at yesterday’s debate attacking Obama for his … fictional apology tour.
Here’s the Obama spot, which will air in nine swing states
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/dueling-post-debate-ads-obama-goes-positive-romney-hits-apology-tour/2012/10/23/58944e64-1d0f-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html
Posted at 10:47 AM ET, 10/23/2012
Romney embraces ‘world court,’ which top adviser John Bolton disparaged as ‘illegitimate’
By Greg Sargent
One of the more interesting claims Mitt Romney made during yesterday’s debate was that he hopes to see Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prosecuted by the international community. It was a curious statement coming from someone who frequently criticizes Obama’s internationalist bent as too accommodating towards the rest of the world, and again suggested Romney is moderating his foreign policy posture so voters don’t think he’d represent a continuation of reckless Bush-style go-it-alone unilateralism.
“I’d make sure that Ahmadinejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention,” Romney said. “His words amount to genocide incitation.”
A top adviser to Romney later clarified to Talking Points Memo that Romney wants to see Ahmadinejad indicted and arrested by the “World Court.” My Post colleague Glenn Kessler believes this can only be a reference to the International Criminal Court.
It’s possible Romney was referring to the “International Court of Justice,” but that body does not prosecute for genocide. The ICC does
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
bwa ha ha ha ha ha
BWA HA HA HA HA Woman, you is crazy… :-)
Quote For The Day
“What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. … Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere. In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel,” – Efraim Halevy, former chief of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
SpreadTheWord @word_34
@ThePlumLineGS Anyone catch that Romney outed the number of nukes held by Great Britain when talking Pakistan? http://dnai.in/aZQT
WE RESPECTABLE NEGEROES
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2012
Chauncey DeVega
In Light of the Final Debate on Foreign Affairs, is Mitt Romney Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
The final debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama was a technocratic affair in which the challenger borrowed the incumbent’s positions in order to prevent a knockout defeat. I follow politics both because of professional and personal commitments; I cannot imagine an independent or low information voter being able to remain engaged in Monday night’s debate for any sustained amount of time.
Obama clearly defeated Mitt Romney following a devastating flurry of blows to the head and body–this was the equivalent of a grown ass man beating up an impudent child–alas, it will not matter in terms of the final vote.
Few issues of legitimate disagreement or substance were discussed in Monday’s debate. As Chris Matthews smartly pointed out, there was no mention of how multi-polar our world had become, or how Europe’s economic crisis has impacted America’s economy. Those are epic fails on the part of the moderator.
http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-light-of-final-debate-on-foreign.html
Romney’s grandson ADORES POTUS: Doesn’t want to take a SWANG at’em! LOL
The POTUS kicked butt last night. Now let’s seal the deal. VOTE.
ABC Fact Check: “One was when Mitt Romney repeated what he said before, that the President went on an apology tour when he became president. We’ve looked at all those speeches on those foreign trips. The President didn’t apologize for America.”
http://youtu.be/dWQqZQb4RLo
Howard Fineman: “The Obama people insist – and I think with some good reason – that Mitt Romney was just flat-out lying, not to put too fine a point on it, on the question of whether he, Mitt Romney, was willing to support direct federal help, the kind of help the President put forth, for the auto industry.”
http://youtu.be/zidEu3SIc1Y
David Gergen: “I do think that the Democrats and President Obama have a legitimate argument. The guy who came into these debates was not the candidate we saw in the primaries. We go back to the etch-a-sketch.”
http://youtu.be/CxtHiH3OND8
Chuck Todd: “They’re not claiming victory tonight… at times I felt like he was giving a book report, that there were a lot of world book facts that would show up in some of his answers.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL33NFPKKbI&feature=youtu.be
John King: “There’s no question debate coaches would score this one for the president.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zGM272gAU&feature=youtu.be
Joe Trippi: “I just want to call this debate the big hug, because I think that’s what Romney was doing. He decided he was going to hug Obama on policy after policy, not disagree with him.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYkm1hWPGeA&feature=youtu.behttp://youtu.be/bEbpQZ164II
Chuck Todd: “I was surprised at how meek at times Mitt Romney was.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj31MWvC6bU&feature=youtu.be
Norah O’Donnell: “He repeatedly said that the President was right on issues, that he concurred with him on a number of issues. In fact, it was President Obama who said that Romney was having a hard time differentiating himself.”
http://youtu.be/6Ut2D3TjkjA
Martha Raddatz: “President Obama humanized what he was talking about. He talked a lot about the troops. He talked about the survivors from 9/11. He talked about the people in Israel. So if, in fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their attention with that sort of approach.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE:
CBS poll: “Well, Scott, the uncommitted voters in our survey – immediately after the debate was over – gave a clear victory to President Obama this evening.”
http://youtu.be/BTYYICPspWg
James Carville: “If this had would’ve been a Little League baseball game, they would’ve called the thing after four innings.”
http://youtu.be/ZxTERNMkZdI
Neil Cavuto:“I think that Mitt Romney botched a lot of things tonight.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuG6HfW9NG4&feature=youtu.be
Larry Kudlow: “I think there’s a little too much valium in the Romney presentation tonight.”
http://youtu.be/sT4_kQOcK4A
Matt Dowd: “But for the commander-in-chief, strong leader… he actually lost that strong leader tonight to the President.
From Roger Simon:
In presidential debate, Obama takes Romney to school
At the very beginning of his third and final debate with Barack Obama Monday night, Mitt Romney turned toward the president and said: “Mr. President, it’s good to be with you again.”
And I would bet that, about 90 minutes later, even Romney would agree that it was not that good to have been on the debate stage with Obama once again.
At age 65, Mitt Romney probably thought he was done with school. But he got schooled by Obama on foreign policy at what will be their last meeting before Election Day.
Romney wasn’t terrible. But he was on the defensive for much of the evening, a fine sheen of sweat popped put on his forehead long before the debate ended, and – – worst of all – – Romney was repeatedly forced to say he agreed with Obama on policy after policy.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82733.html#ixzz2A629Z48a
looking for this clip from this description:
Steve Schmitt, whom I usually like, was praising the political wisdom of Romney for rejecting McCain’s neoconservative screed of early yesterday. Schmitt also acknowledged that every position McCain took was Romney’s position until 9:00 p.m. last night. But Schmitt said it was politically brilliant. Then Rachel Maddow really went off. She said something to this effect (rough paraphrase): “It’s not like he rejected his past position on light rail; 68,000 people died in these wars! And then Romney denied he ever rejected his past position. He pretended these were his positions all along. This is now a character question, and it’s disqualifying for me.”
I heard and saw Rachel’s RIGHTEOUS RANT. Looking for the clip too.
FOUND IT
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/49512467#49512467
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The ongoing war Romney chooses not to understand
By Steve Benen
Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:45 AM EDT.
Early on last night, President Obama argued that Mitt Romney’s track record on foreign policy exposes him as a candidate unready to lead. “I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy,” Obama said, “but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”
As part of a lengthy indictment, the president added: “You’ve said that first we should not have a timeline in Afghanistan then you said we should. Now you say maybe or it depends, which means not only were you wrong but you were also confusing and sending mixed messages both to our troops and our allies.” Romney had no response.
Later in the debate, Romney finally stated his intentions: “[W]e’re going to be finished by 2014. And when I’m president, we’ll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014.” What’s wrong with that? It’s a perfectly defensible position to have, except for the inconvenient fact that it’s not Mitt Romney’s position.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/23/14641810-the-ongoing-war-romney-chooses-not-to-understand?lite
President Obama’s Commanding Victory in the Final Debate
Posted on 10/23/2012 at 6:15 am by Bob Cesca
Where do I begin? President Obama won his second debate in a row, and this one in particular was a commanding victory in which his opponent, Mitt Romney, was reduced to a sweaty — Nixon sweaty — incoherent mess.
Last night, the president literally stared down Mitt Romney and accused him of being a foreign policy and military neophyte — a know-nothing empty suit who can barely make it through a sentence without equivocating and reversing his own policies from months, weeks, days, in fact seconds earlier. […]
For the first time in my life, I observed a Democratic leader emasculate a Republican leader on foreign policy. But it wasn’t necessarily about testosterone and war-mongering. The president simply made Romney appear wholly out-of-his-depth and weak. [continued]
http://thedailybanter.com/2012/10/president-obamas-commanding-victory-in-the-final-debate/
NYT Editorial: Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
…. At his worst, Mr. Romney sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question. “We want a peaceful planet,” he said. “We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and prosperous future and not be at war.”
…. Mr. Romney’s problem is that he does not actually have any real ideas on foreign policy beyond what President Obama has already done, or plans to do…
…. Mr. Romney’s closing statement summed it all up. He said almost nothing about foreign policy. He moved back to his comfort zone: cheerfully delivered disinformation about domestic policy.
Full editorial here
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Steve Benen: The Blowout in Boca …. CBS polled undecided voters again last night, and found Obama winning this debate by 30 points.
…. I not only thought the president excelled last night, I think Romney very nearly embarrassed himself. After six years of campaigning for the nation’s highest office, asking voters to make him the leader of the free world, the former one-term governor conveyed an unnerving message to the nation in the year’s final debate: he neither knows nor cares about international affairs. As a New York Times editorial noted, Romney at times “sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question.”
Full post here
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@venice4change
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Cagle
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Greg Sargent: …. Tonight, America was introduced to Peacenik Mitt — and watched him take a pummeling….
Romney didn’t take many of the shots he was expected to take — while Obama landed a number of very hard blows on Romney early on. Obama got right to his core message: We got Bin Laden, and we’re ending Bush’s war … Oddly, Romney again and again supported Obama’s positions, at one point basically acknowledging that Obama had made it clear that the United States has Israel’s back.
…. Perhaps most important, Obama repeatedly connected his insistence on fiscal sanity on defense, and savings from drawing down the Bush wars, to the need to invest in nation building at home. In other words, Obama successfully connected tonight’s debate over foreign policy to his core domestic policy message about the imperative of investing in long term middle class security. I don’t know how much tonight will change the race, if at all, but my bet is polls in the days ahead will show stronger public preference for Obama’s overall vision.
Full post here
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LA Times: …. Monday’s presidential debate featured a forceful and articulate defense of Obama’s foreign policy. That was no surprise. What was surprising was that it came from Romney.
…. Once Romney intimated that he might keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past NATO’s 2014 deadline. No more. Now he agrees with Obama that it is feasible to transfer combat responsibilities to the Afghans by that point. On Iran, Romney emphasized economic sanctions rather than the threat of a military attack, effectively endorsing Obama’s approach…..
… Romney dusted off his canard that the president had conducted an “apology tour” through the Middle East. To be clear: Obama has not apologized for American influence; every time Romney says otherwise, he reinforces the many reasons to distrust his honesty.
…. If Romney believes in a thoughtful and centrist foreign policy, which he hadn’t until Monday night, it would argue for his candidacy. But if that vision is attractive — and it is — why not stick with the president who is already pursuing it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/opinion/the-final-presidential-debate.html?_r=1&
Post-Debate Impressions
by BooMan
Mon Oct 22nd, 2012 at 10:58:24 PM EST
Tonight was the worst ass-kicking any presidential candidate has ever received in a debate in the history of presidential debates. Mitt Romney was slaughtered. And let me explain why.
Ordinarily, the Democratic candidate does much better on substance than the Republican. This has certainly been true since at least 1992, including in the vice-presidential debates. But the problem is that the majority of the voting public is not well-versed enough on substance to know who is telling the truth or which statements are realistic and which are ridiculous. I don’t say this to denigrate the intelligence of the American electorate; it’s just a fact that most people can’t devote enough time to politics to have informed opinions about policy. That’s particularly true of foreign policy.
As a result, it was possible for George W. Bush to make a fool of himself and still win a debate against Al Gore because Al Gore acted like a jerk. It was possible for John Kerry to completely decimate George W. Bush three times and still not win the election. And it was possible for Sarah Palin to appear on stage with Joe Biden without the entire Republican Party being struck by a lightning bolt. The reason Mitt Romney lost bigger tonight than any candidate in history is because he lost on every measure other than substance and he lost on substance, too.
Simply put, Mitt Romney was the beta-dog all night in every exchange. Obama never took his eyes off him. He never failed to attack. Romney was reduced to agreeing with Obama on half the questions. Romney got pushed around by the moderator. His demeanor was weak. His expression was weak. His arguments were weak. If this were a 12-round heavyweight bout, Romney lost every round.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/10/22/225824/60
October 22, 2012 11:33 PM
Post-Debate Spin & Assessment
By Ed Kilgore
The MSM reaction is similar to though a bit stronger than in the second debate: Obama won, but Mitt got another high-profile chance to repeat his “economic referendum” rap and reassure swing voters he isn’t determined to go to war with Iran or stick around in Afghanistan.
GOP spinners say Mitt did enough. They are definitely playing the “Mitt’s already winning” and/or “Mitt has Big Mo” cards.
The CBS snap poll of uncommitted voters (which gave Mitt a 24-point margin in the first debate) went to Obama by a 53-23 margin tonight.
CNN’s snap poll of all debate viewers (and this time they acknowledged this sample skews Republican) showed Obama winning 48-40. And PPP’s, which covered swing state viewers, showed Obama winning 53-42.
So taken as a whole, with Biden winning the Veep debate (though marginally) and Obama winning two of three presidential debates (the “rubber match” pretty clearly), the question now is whether that first debate gave Romney a decisive, irreversible advantage, either by carrying Romney across some “acceptability” threshold for “wrong track” undecided voters or by exciting conservatives beyond all reality.
If the answer is “no,” Obama’s in pretty good shape going into the last two weeks, assuming the Democratic GOTV “ground game” is as good as advertised. Certainly Romney did nothing tonight to attract voters not already inclined to back him.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_10/postdebate_spin_assessment040671.php
October 23, 2012
The Candidate from Oceania
Mitt Romney’s performance last night was, for any viewers who still hardly know him, a perfect condensation of Mitt the Politician. On the auto bailout, he lied: “I said they need — these [auto] companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees.” On China, he played the demagogue: “[O]n day one I will label them a currency manipulator.” On foreign policy, “he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost,” as the NY Times summarized his rambling. So, whenever possible “He moved back to his comfort zone” by “cheerfully deliver[ing] disinformation about domestic policy.”
In 90 minutes, Mitt gave his all: lies, demagoguery, incoherence, and unhinged happy talk. He converted night into day, except when converting day into night was more expedient; he casually launched a U.S.-export-killing trade war–“unless, of course,” as Krugman noted, “it [was] just bluster aimed at making voters think you’re tough”; he braked and downshifted so aggressively from his previous, base-pleasing bellicosity that he left incomprehensible skid marks; and naturally he flooded the zone at every opportunity with wondrous domestic splendors.
What’s left to learn about Mitt Romney? Nothing. Which is also what constitutes Mitt Romney.
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http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/10/the-candidate-from-oceania.html
Posted at 11:25 PM ET, 10/22/2012
Peacenik Mitt gets pummeled
By Greg Sargent
I was genuinely surprised by the Mitt Romney who showed up tonight. Conservatives had been yearning for Romney to finally swing the Libya cudgel at Obama’s supposed national security glass jaw — the one they’ve persuaded themselves Romney is always on the verge of shattering for good. But for most of the night, Romney studiously avoided attacking Obama aggressively. Perhaps Romney feels out of his depth on these issues and decided to tread carefully, to avoid major mistakes. Perhaps Romney thinks he’s on track to win. Perhaps Romney decided his most important imperative was to appear reassuring and presidential, rather than go on the attack. He clearly decided he needed to head off perceptions of himself as a throwback to Bush-era foreign policy adventurism, again and again stressing his desire for a peaceful world.
Tonight, America was introduced to Peacenik Mitt — and watched him take a pummeling. I don’t know how much this will impact the overall dynamic of the race — it may not matter much at all — but it’s hard to see this as a good night for Romney.
Romney didn’t take many of the shots he was expected to take — while Obama landed a number of very hard blows on Romney early on. Obama got right to his core message: We got Bin Laden, and we’re ending Bush’s wars. Obama holds the edge on foreign policy issues, and seemed determined to reinforce the sense that Romney simply lacks command of them, repeatedly invoking previous Romney statements to hit him for being “all over the map,” and contrasting that with the consistency and clarity he said a Commander in Chief must project. Romney failed to rebut many of these hits effectively. Oddly, Romney again and again supported Obama’s positions, at one point basically acknowledging that Obama had made it clear that the United States has Israel’s back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Obama outpoints Romney in third debate
By Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post
BOCA RATON, Fla.
The “horses and bayonets” moment is probably the headline. But the larger story of the third and final presidential debate, ostensibly about foreign policy, is that Mitt Romney didn’t really lay a glove on President Obama. For most of the evening, he didn’t even try.
Obama came ready to punch, Romney to counterpunch — or, since we’re torturing the boxing metaphor, to clinch. He agreed with Obama’s policy on Afghanistan, on Libya, on Syria, on the use of pilotless drones in the fight against al-Qaeda, pretty much on everything except how to improve the U.S. economy. Which wasn’t even supposed to be a topic of discussion, but apparently nobody told the candidates.
The president spent much of the evening recounting Romney’s earlier, contradictory foreign-policy positions — his prior view, for example, that the United States shouldn’t have pressed to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi because that amounted to “mission creep.” On that issue, as on many others, Romney simply did not acknowledge his flip-flops. It was as if he were at a dinner party and someone brought up a topic too vulgar for polite company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-obama-outpoints-romney-in-third-debate/2012/10/23/a1342358-1c77-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
The Blowout in Boca
By Steve Benen
Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:02 AM EDT
To put in perspective who won last night’s debate, consider a polling tidbit. A few weeks ago, after the first contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney, a CBS poll of undecided voters taken immediately after the event showed the Republican winning the debate by 24 points.
CBS polled undecided voters again last night, and found Obama winning this debate by 30 points.
Debate analysis is a bit like art evaluation — not everyone sees the same thing — but I not only thought the president excelled last night, I think Romney very nearly embarrassed himself. After six years of campaigning for the nation’s highest office, asking voters to make him the leader of the free world, the former one-term governor conveyed an unnerving message to the nation in the year’s final debate: he neither knows nor cares about international affairs. As a New York Times editorial noted, Romney at times “sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question.”
As best as I can tell, Romney adopted a three-pronged strategy for the event in Boca Raton, Fla.
Part One: Agree with Obama
For months, Romney, Paul Ryan, and their Republican allies have been desperate to paint Obama as pursuing a weak and misguided foreign policy. Last night, while the president was on the offensive throughout, exposing Romney’s contradictions, reversals, and overall ignorance, the Republican did the opposite, playing down differences, and endorsing the president’s position on everything from Afghanistan to Iranian sanctions to Syria to Egypt. In some cases this meant abandoning positions Romney has long held, and in other cases, it meant pretending his agenda isn’t his agenda.
It left voters with a detached message that bordered on incoherence: Obama has a failed foreign policy … which I intend to implement if elected.
Part Two: Change the subject
Romney had ample time to prepare to discuss foreign policy, and a team of Bush/Cheney administration officials to tell him how to at least sound like he’s answering the questions, but he repeatedly tried to change the subject away from foreign policy during the debate on foreign policy. Over the course of 90 minutes, Romney mentioned Osama bin Laden twice, mentioned food stamps three times, and mentioned school teachers eight times.
Plenty of strategists have said voters will find this compelling, since domestic issues trump international affairs in 2012, but no candidate benefits from appearing weak. This was a debate in which Romney was supposed to appear ready to lead a nation during a time of war and international “tumult.” Instead, Romney appeared to be running for governor, not president.
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Part Three: Make stuff up
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/23/14641124-the-blowout-in-boca?lite
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, everyone!
Breakfast is served, Ladies:
Thank you! Much obliged! It looks delightful.